


grab a tiger by the tail

by amusewithaview



Series: Nothing but love in view [14]
Category: Deadpool (2016), Thor (Movies), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 03:23:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11118879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amusewithaview/pseuds/amusewithaview
Summary: The Avengers were strong, but they were essentiallyMjolnir, and not every problem was shaped like a nail (or Loki).Darcy current problem was definitely not nail (or Loki) shaped.  If pressed, she would have described it as almost box-shaped, with squiggly wires coming out of one side and a panel of lights on the other.  Darcy’s current problem was shaped a whole lot like Jane’s science.  To be more specific, it was shaped like Jane’s homemade science gizmos.To be exact, her problem was one of Jane’s specially designed machines.Which had been stolen.By the new intern.Of course.





	grab a tiger by the tail

**Author's Note:**

  * For [G_the_G](https://archiveofourown.org/users/G_the_G/gifts).



The Avengers were really good at saving the world.  They also excelled at rescuing nations, preventing natural disasters, and showing up on every television channel at once.  What they were not good at, in Darcy’s studied opinion, was _subtlety_.  An individual Avenger could, in theory, get shit done in a quiet and sneaky manner.  The Black Widow and Hawkeye were both infamous within certain circles prior to picking up the Avenging.

Unfortunately, when they picked up Avenging, they dropped stealth.

Put another way: once they joined the team, getting them on solo missions was much harder - not because Natasha and Clint stopped taking solo missions, oh no, but because other Avengers would _crash_ said missions like they were the last house party before school was out.  Darcy had watched it happen at least three times in the last month.

The Avengers were strong, but they were essentially _Mjolnir_ , and not every problem was shaped like a nail (or Loki).

Darcy current problem was definitely not nail (or Loki) shaped.  If pressed, she would have described it as almost box-shaped, with squiggly wires coming out of one side and a panel of lights on the other.  Darcy’s current problem was shaped a whole lot like Jane’s science.  To be more specific, it was shaped like Jane’s homemade science gizmos.

To be exact, her problem _was_ one of Jane’s specially designed machines.

Which had been stolen.

By the new intern.

_Of course._

Darcy had, by virtue of some judicious hacking, discovered that said intern was a plant, sent to them by one of those weird pseudo-scientific anti-alien groups that had popped up in the wake of the Battle of New York.  This group called itself the “Skywatchers” and, per SHIELD’s no-longer-so-secret-files, they vacillated somewhere between “Saturday morning cartoon villain” and “xenocidal tendencies.”

Next time she was totally letting JARVIS pick the intern.  She’d even let him be smug at her about it.

Jane was understandably, Not Pleased with recent events.  “If we tell Thor -”

“It’ll become a Thing,” Darcy said.  “A newsworthy thing.  An Event, even.”

She wrinkled her nose.  Jane’s distaste for mainstream media attention was rivaled only by Bucky’s.  Unfortunate, since Thor had all but declared _their_ status as soulmates and _hers_ as the next Queen of Asgard.  Luckily, that news had only hit eight of the nine realms, but Earth would figure it out eventually.  “Well,” Jane said slowly, “we could always retrieve it _ourselves_.”

“These guys went to a lot of trouble to get that doodad.  How excited do you think they would be if they could get ahold of _you?_ ”  Darcy huffed, slouching down in her seat, “I’m not going in.   _Hostage_ is not a good look on me.  And I am not dying for your doodad.”

“If you can’t go and I can’t go and sending the Avengers would make it a Thing, what’re our options?” Jane asked.  She had her thinking face on, the one Darcy associated with a mad scramble for the nearest internet-capable device and an unhealthily desperate plunge into the depths of ScienceDirect or, even worse, JSTOR.  “There are… people,” she said haltingly, eyes focused on something distant.  “We could hire one of those… people.”

“People, people who?  You mean like mercenaries?”

Jane shrugged.  “Essentially.”

“I might… know a guy.”

“You know a guy?”

“Well, I know a guy who knows other guys.  And gals.  One of _those_ people might be what we need.”

“Why am I unsurprised that you know a guy.”

“Hey, do not knock my _excellent_ networking skillz.”

“…that was a ‘skillz’ with a ‘z’ wasn’t it.”

“No comment.”

* * *

Darcy’s ‘guy’ was more like a step-cousin once removed, and _he_ put her in touch with a man named Weasel, who told her to come to Sister Margaret’s School for Wayward Children on a certain night and really, it was all too cloak and dagger for her and she spent half her time living in a base with _superheroes_.  Didn’t mean she wasn’t going to show.

Sister Margaret’s School for Wayward Children was in an appropriately shady alley, with an appropriately grimy-looking bouncer in the doorway.  He was seven feet tall if he was an inch, built like a brick wall, with a jawline so straight and sharp Jane could have used it to determine vectors.

He gave her a once-over and a grunt before turning back to the door.

“Hey!” a tall, gangly-looking man with floppy blond hair greeted her from behind the bar.  He, too, gave her a once-over before asking: “Are you the chick who needed the thing, the beer delivery, or new meat?”

“First one,” Darcy said, examining the bar and miscellaneous assorted pictures that lined the wall behind it.

“Right, right, the reallocation of improperly distributed goods.”

She gave him a flat look.  “Somebody shady stole some shit from my boss, we would like to pay someone equally shady to steal it back.”

“Huh,” he said, “totally had you pegged as one of the stunned-and-runs.”

Darcy snorted thinking about Destroyers and elves and ancient scientist-possessing rocks.  “I don’t stun easy.”

He stuck out a hand, “Name’s Weasel.”

“Darcy, now about the thing?”

“Right, so I had a couple of possibilities lined up, assuming you didn’t run, but now… This thing, is it… weird?”

“Define ‘weird,’” Darcy said warily.

“So that’s a yes, then.”

“Why do you need to know?”

“There’s a guy, and he’s the best, really, but he’s a little weird himself.”

“But he’s the best?”

“Well, he’ll tell you that.  I’d say he’s pretty close, but not to his face.”

Instead of using brain power to parse that, Darcy cut to the chase: “Is he here and would he take the job?”

“He’s here, and,” Weasel gave her a second once-over, this time lingering on her hair, mouth, and pointedly raised eyebrow, “he’ll probably take the job.  He’ll _definitely_  come on to you.”

“All right,” because if the worst part of tonight was awkward come-ons from a ‘weird’ thief, she would take it and like it, “where do I find him?”

“Back table, look for the guy with the cards.”

Darcy turned where he pointed and set off.  The patronage of Sister Margaret’s School for Wayward Children was rough, rowdy, and ready for a fight.  The whole place had a very Asgardian tavern crossed with a motorcycle club and stirred with guns.  And knives.  And what she could have _sworn_ were a pair of katanas strapped to one guy’s back.  She kept her eyes on the prize and copied Nat’s murderstalk, which carried her all the way to the back corner.  She halted, glancing around and locked eyes with a man sitting in a shadowed booth, facing the room.

He tilted his head to one side, studying her, then suddenly his hands were full of cards.  Functionally, he was shuffling, but it looked like magic.  The cards floated, curling around and over his hands and looking more like ribbons than multiple pieces of plasticky card stock.  She couldn’t tell, at this distance, whether he was just ridiculously talented with his hands or using some other, ‘weirder’ trick.

As she got came closer to him, the tricks got more elaborate, and it became clear that he was incredibly handsome.  Beautiful, really.  Expressive face, sharp cheekbones, wicked grin - and he was showing off _for her_.

But she was here for business, not pleasure.

“Is that supposed to impress me?” she asked him as she reached the table.

The instant she spoke, the cards fell from the air, scattering over the table between them.  His smile was wiped away, replaced by a look of surprise before he shuttered his expression again.  This time, when he smiled, it was slow and sharp and more than a little dangerous.

“Oh,  _chère_ , now don’t be hasty, Remy can be _very_ impressive,” he drawled.

Darcy was so shocked to hear the words of her mark _here_ and _now_ that she swayed on her feet, and right into his arms when he _vaulted_ the table to steady her.  This close, he was tall and broad and -

She had no idea what to say to him.  Darcy stared up at him and tried not to gape like a useless guppy.

“Speechless, now?”  He curled a hand under her jaw, running his thumb across the skin just below her lips.  “That didn’t take long.”

And just like that, she found her missing voice.  “Okay,” she said, pressing her hands flat to his chest (muscles!) and pushing gently to get a little space.  “I’m not going to keel over and die of shock, so can you take a few steps back before I suffocate on your ego?”

“Bright eyes and a sharp tongue?  Oh,  _chère_ , I may never let you go,” he told her, and he was smiling but his eyes - and there was something strange about them - were deadly serious.

This was _not_ what she had expected from Sister Margaret’s School for Wayward ~~Children~~ Soulmates.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to picture whatever kind of Gambit you like (and I'm always open to hearing about people's preferred fan casting) but I tend to imagine the 90's animated Gambit when I write him.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] grab a tiger by the tail](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12164637) by [amusewithaview](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amusewithaview/pseuds/amusewithaview), [Dubstep_Wombat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dubstep_Wombat/pseuds/Dubstep_Wombat)




End file.
